Fresh cranberry beans or borlotti beans are one of my favorite fall foods. I used to start eating them around Thanksgiving when they came out of California, but more and more local growers are producing them and now they are turning up in my New York farmer’s market much earlier. They are creamy, mild, and extremely versatile. The bean is ivory colored with red speckles (as are the 4-inch long pods), and they turn a brownish pink when you cook them. The Latin binomial is Phaseolus vulgaris, or “common bean.” There is a lot of variability within this species, which includes cultivars like Anasazi beans, pintos, and navy beans.

Dried bean are great, though their nutrition and flavor degrades after 12 months and they take longer to cook, so if you don’t know the age of your beans when you buy them, a dried cranberry bean can be pretty disappointing. Since the beans are coming in now, you can always dry them yourself, which is easy to do: if you grow them, you can allow them to dry on the vine or stalk until the beans inside rattle, or you can place the pods on newspaper in a dry attic, again, until the beans inside rattle. Beans dried in this manner will need to be pasteurized: Either bake the dried beans (in their pods) at 160 F for 30 minutes, or place them in freezer baggies and freeze for 48 hours at 0 F. This kills any insects and their eggs. If using a dehydrator, shell the beans and spread them on the trays. Dry at 140 F for a few hours, until the beans are hard. You can dry in your oven, of course, but honestly, it will drive you crazy. Often the beans cook rather than dry out.

Eugenia Bone, a veteran food writer who has published in many national magazines and newspapers, is also a cookbook author. She is the author of Well-Preserved (Clarkson Potter 2009). She has contributed to many cookbooks and a few literary journals, been nominated for a variety of food writing awards and participated in radio, interactive and online interviews, in addition to appearing multiple times on television. She lives in New York City and Crawford, Colo.

The secret to tasty food is homemade and seasonal. To do that, you've got to put up food. Well-Preserved reports on small batch preservation year round, and generates recipes from those preserved foods.